The problem, I suppose, is that there are way too many squirrels and they don’t have a national conservation association holding annual banquets to raffle off shotguns in their honor.

Because of that, I can’t find any research on compensatory mortality and squirrels. Sexy species such as ptarmigan, grouse, pheasants and wild turkeys get radio-collared every year, but nobody earns his doctorate following around the red, gray and fox squirrels chattering at you from the top of an oak tree.

Compensatory mortality is the idea that overall wildlife population numbers typically are not affected by hunting success. In other words, something like 60 percent of cottontail rabbits born this spring will be dead by this time next year, for instance, and that will remain true no matter what kills them.

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Michael Eckert(Photo: Times Herald)

It’s both logical and illogical at the same time. It suggests that it doesn’t matter how many rabbits hunters kill, which is why college biology degree candidates keep studying it. Researchers typically take a wildlife population that is protected from hunting and compare it to a hunted population. They want to find out if hunting adds to total mortality, or if other factors compensate for it.

Just about every study finds compensation, which makes sense. When hunters take a large number of rabbits, they improve the chances that the remainder will survive. The rabbits left behind will have less competition for better food and habitat. Few targets will mean owls and hawks and coyotes will take rabbits. So, it evens out.

Likewise, if hunters stay home, more rabbits die of hunger, disease or predation.

The Michigan Natural Resources Commission is going to change the squirrel hunting season and is worried about what effect increased hunting opportunities will have on squirrel numbers.

At their meeting next week, commissioners will decide on a recommendation from the DNR’s wildlife division to extend the hunting season to March 31. The season now opens Sept. 15 and closes March 1. The change would align squirrel season with rabbit season.

Our season is already longer than those in surrounding states, and this would add 30 days. DNR analysts expect few squirrels will be taken in those 30 days added to the end of the season — in part because few squirrels are hunted period these days. Since the mid-1950s, when everybody hunted rabbits, squirrels and other small game and more people bought small-game licenses than deer tags, participation has fallen about 2 percent a year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says rabbit hunting is down two thirds since 1975, squirrel hunting is down by half, and upland game birds are down even more. Small game hunters are going extinct.

But there is a problem with extending the squirrel season into March, which the DNR acknowledges.

Squirrels have two breeding seasons. The fox, red and gray squirrels that Michigan hunters target have slightly different breeding seasons, but they overlap enough that we can say they have as spring litters and summer litters.

The spring litters will be in the nest in March. Squirrel kits are entirely dependent on their mothers for about the first 30 days after they are born.

“Extending the squirrel season into a time period when any breeding female has dependent young may be a controversial issue,” the DNR recommendation to the NRC says. “Some hunters may object to shooting nursing females.”

That could test anyone’s faith in compensatory mortality.

But the numbers say otherwise. Average annual mortality for adult gray squirrels is nearly 60 percent. It is even harder being a baby squirrel: The average lifespan of a gray squirrel, say researchers at the Smithsonian.

Those March babies already face long odds.

Still, it’s hard to contemplate squirrel hunting in March. I associate squirrels with frosty, sunshiny mornings in December and January. Wait; that describes this March.